


Jumping Without a Net

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Rescue, Skydiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 07:57:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9063250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Peggy has a parachute malfunction. For my h/c bingo "protection" square.





	

Knowing that he'd successfully participated once already in a live parachute drop had taken Jack from sheer panic at the whole idea to mere dread. He still felt that sensible human beings should not be flinging themselves out of airplanes.

But of course Peggy friggin' Carter loved it. Even as turbulence jolted the plane under them, she was grinning at him in that devil-may-care kind of way, as if she didn't even _care_ about plummeting to her death as long as she had fun doing it.

"Almost to the drop zone," she called over the rumble of the engine and the screaming wind. "Ready?"

It was about as close as she would come to _Are you okay?_ He grimaced and stood up, holding onto the webbing on the inside of the cargo bay as they bounced over another air pocket. "Let's get this over with," he called back, and she flashed him a cheery grin.

"Jump minus thirty seconds." Daniel's voice, and not over the radio. He was working his way back down the cargo bay from the cockpit, hanging onto the cargo netting with one hand and gripping the crutch with the other. Because of his leg, skydiving was out; the impact of landing would've driven his artificial leg through his pelvis, or broken his good leg if he'd tried to land one-legged. This hadn't stopped him from coming along, of course.

"Don't fall out," Jack snapped at him. Having someone to push back against helped him ignore the watery feeling in his legs. "Unlike the rest of us, you're not wearing a parachute, remember." And the way they were bouncing around in the damn turbulence, Daniel falling out the open jump door wasn't an unreasonable fear. "Not that I care if you _do_ fall out because of your own carelessness, but I don't want to deal with Peggy having hysterics."

This got dirty looks from both of them, but it was better than Daniel's nervous look earlier, feeding Jack's own anxious emotions in a spiraling feedback loop. Turning away, face smoothing out from its irritated frown, Daniel beelined for Peggy to give her a quick kiss; then he turned to clap Jack on the shoulder. "Good luck. You've got your work cut out for you, Peggy, keeping an eye on this one too."

"Hey," Jack said.

Peggy was already moving to the open doorway. Jack took position behind her. A glance over his shoulder reassured him that Daniel was staying back from the open door and the lethal drop beneath.

The drop into which he would soon fling himself ...

Jack took a deep breath and forced down the nerves. All he had to do was pull the damn cord and try to aim for a clear space instead of a tree. It was night, but there was a bright moon. 

Another jolt of turbulence made him grip the cargo netting more firmly.

_You did this nine times without killing yourself. You can do one more._

He looked over his shoulder again. Daniel was speaking on the radio to the pilot. Looking up, Daniel flashed them a thumbs-up.

Peggy didn't hesitate; she kicked off from the open door.

What happened next was a freak accident, the kind of thing that could have happened to anyone: the plane rolled at that moment, bucking in the wind. Rather than leaping clear, Peggy was kicked back against the side of the plane. Then she dropped away. Jack lurched forward a step in shock, and glanced quickly back at Daniel, whose face was white and horrified.

"Jack --" he began, a panicked shout.

Jack didn't hear what else he said; if Peggy had hurt herself, he couldn't lose a second or there would be too much distance between them to do anything about it. After seeing _that_ happen to Peggy -- more experienced and, in this situation, more confident -- throwing himself out of the plane was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. He did it anyway.

He fell free into clear air. Wind buffeted him; it was much worse without the insulation of the plane. _We should've aborted the jump ..._ But it hadn't seemed this bad. Wouldn't be bad, still, if Peggy managed to straighten out and make a decent dive.

With the wind kicking him around, it took him a moment to spot her: a small figure in the moonlight below him. It was the movement that caught his eye. Rather than falling in jump position, she was tumbling, spinning helplessly as she fell.

A wave of sick fear washed over him, and then somehow faded away, leaving him clearheaded. He'd never practiced for this, but he could see what had to be done. The only thing to do, really, other than letting Peggy splash herself all over the countryside below. And that was no option.

Jack folded his arms and legs, streamlining himself like a human bullet. The way she was spinning would help slow her down; hopefully it wouldn't break her arms and legs too. But at the very least, he could catch up.

He didn't dare think about the fact that he was making himself plummet _faster_ toward the unforgiving ground.

The radio at his belt crackled and there was a voice, snatched away by the wind. Daniel, certainly, who would be going nuts up there. Tearing his eyes away from Peggy for a moment, Jack looked up just in time to glimpse the plane against the moon, turning around to make another pass over them. Looked like they had backup, of a sort, for all the good it'd do them. He sincerely hoped Daniel had enough sense not to try jumping after them, with or without a parachute.

He was close to Peggy now. He couldn't tell -- not in the uncertain moonlight, at the speed they were falling -- if she was moving on her own, struggling in an uncoordinated kind of way, or if it was only the wind flopping her limbs around.

What he did know was that he was going to have to get hold of her and pull her cord. And the window for that was rapidly closing. From their jump altitude they had about a minute of freefall before needing to deploy the chute. He realized with a brand new wash of panic that he'd been too busy focusing on Peggy to count in his head, like he was supposed to be doing, figuring when to pull his ripcord. Usually in the past he'd just gone by when the more experienced skydivers deployed their chutes, anyway. On this jump he'd been expecting to pick up his cues from Peggy.

Now it was up to him. If he waited too long -- if he got tangled up with her, if one of her flailing limbs smacked him and knocked him silly, if trying to grab her fouled _his_ cords --

No choice.

And, very soon, no time.

His first grab missed by several feet, and the resulting change in his trajectory, relatively to hers, cost him precious seconds as he had to line himself up for another try. He swung again, trying to grab her belt or one of the straps on the parachute, and missed again. His heart was pounding, his stomach a clenched ball of terror.

There just wasn't any safe way to do this, no way to get hold of her without getting so close that he risked getting tangled up or worse. Not unaware of the irony, and ignoring another burst of static from their radios as Daniel worked himself into a fit overhead, Jack changed trajectory into a deliberate collision.

It worked out better than he had any right to expect. He managed to get his arms around her, and caught enough of her momentum to spin a couple of times, but after a couple of false tries that had them spinning the other way, he got them straightened out and falling together. 

He was underneath, with Peggy was above him, face to face. Her face was white in the moonlight, a black smear of blood showing under the edge of her helmet. 

Falling backwards, he couldn't see how close the ground was below him, which was absolutely terrifying -- but it also meant he was able to spread out his legs and get her spread out somewhat to slow their fall. But not enough. Never enough.

"Peggy!" he shouted, shaking her hard.

Her lashes fluttered, lips parted. She groaned something, but the wind stole it before he could make it out. 

"Peggy, you need to get in position to land. Hear me? I'm going to pull your chute. You have to straighten out and land."

He couldn't tell if she heard him, or if she understood, but there was no time. He risked a glance over his shoulder that was utterly useless; the ground was a tilting map of black and silver, and he couldn't tell how big anything was. They were either too close or they weren't. At least they'd die quickly, he thought.

Pulling her cord and getting away without getting tangled in her chute was going to be a trick, but he didn't dare think more than one step ahead right now. He let go of her, holding on with one hand wrapped around her harness, body stretched away, his other hand gripping her ripcord. He yanked at the same time as he pushed her away from him as hard as he could.

Her whole body jerked and suddenly she was above him, floating away in the night. He didn't wait, just pulled his own cord without thinking. His hands were wet with panic-sweat inside the gloves.

The harness jerked taut against his ribs, driving the breath out of him. He tipped his head back to feast his eyes on the reassuring white billow of his parachute above him, then looked down to find the tree-covered hillside a lot closer than he was comfortable with, and coming up at him a little too fast.

Even at this altitude, though, the wind was blowing hard enough to drive him sideways, making it hard to steer himself to a particular landing site but also keeping him from dropping straight down, giving him a little extra time. He needed it; his nerves were a wreck. He had to drift for a moment or two and get his breathing under control before he looked around for Peggy. She wasn't too far away, drifting with the wind as he was. From here, he couldn't tell if she was controlling her fall or hanging like deadweight under her chute. If she wasn't conscious to assume a landing position, she was going to break some bones at the very least. 

He tried not to think about being stranded out here, in a location where an emergency pickup would be highly problematic, with a badly injured Peggy.

However, intentionally or not, she seemed to be headed for a large open field. That looked like as good a landing site as any; he worked to follow her. The trees were coming up fast. Somehow he managed to avoid the treetops, and, having deployed his chute later than hers, he hit first, taking a few running steps before stumbling and falling with a bruising impact. It was either a natural meadow or some sort of sheep or goat pasture, but either way, not at all the smooth field it had looked from the air. The pockmarked ground seemed designed to trap and break unwary ankles.

But nothing was broken, as far as he could tell. Jack struggled to his feet. He'd missed seeing Peggy hit the ground; she was now a parachute-covered white blur in the moonlight, a couple hundred yards away from him. He struggled out of the chute as fast as he could and ran toward her, stumbling on the uneven ground.

By the time he got there, she was moving, trying to get up and falling. "Peggy," he said, his heart in his throat. He yanked the parachute out of the way, getting tangled in its billowing silk folds himself before he managed to get to her. Catching hold of her harness straps, he pushed her back down to her knees. If she was hurt, she should stay down -- "Peggy, talk to me. Are you hurt?"

"I --" She blinked at him, looking dazed, and raised her hands to grip his wrists. "I don't think so. That was ... everything is sort of a blur."

"You hit your head," Jack said, staring at her. There was a trickle of blood running down the side of her face from under the helmet. He wanted to reach out and wipe it away, but just then Daniel's desperate voice came on the radio again, cracking in a way that sounded almost like a sob: "Peggy, Jack, _Peggy_ , will someone answer me, _please!"_

Jack took a few deep gulps of breath to make sure he could speak in a steady voice. It took him several tries to get the radio off his belt without dropping it; his hands were shaking that badly. "We're fine, _she's_ fine." He looked up, hearing the plane. They were still up there somewhere. "Get that damn plane out of here before you're spotted and the whole mission's blown."

There was a choked almost-laugh from Daniel's end, and a gasp, before he said, "You're good to finish the mission, then?"

"Peggy?" Jack asked.

She reached for Jack's radio, almost dropping it when he relinquished it; her hands were shaking as much as his. Her voice, however, sounded steady and calm. "Daniel, love, I'm all right. We're good to go. Get yourselves out of here."

"Thank God," Daniel breathed. "Thank God. We'll be at the drop zone in two days to pick you up, okay? Peggy --"

Jack stepped away to give them privacy for whatever they needed to say before distance cost them radio contact, and not incidentally to get his nerves under control. He wanted to get a look at Peggy's head injury, but it could wait; it didn't seem to be slowing her down too much, anyway. His parachute caught his eye, bright as a bulls-eye in the moonlight. He walked over to drag it under the trees.

The sound of the plane dwindled until it could no longer be heard.

Peggy followed him before too long. She'd taken off her harness and was dragging her chute. She stumbled occasionally. Jack hoped he'd done the right thing in sending away the plane and Daniel. The field was too short and too rough to serve as a viable runway, but they might be able to find somewhere nearby for an emergency pickup, if they really needed on.

"Jack?" Peggy called softly, and he realized she couldn't see him in the shadows under the trees. He detached himself from the darkness and gave her a hand, dragging her parachute to hide it in the brush. Peggy moved carefully as they worked, shaking her head occasionally and then wincing as if it had been a mistake. 

"Let's have a look at that," Jack told her, gesturing to the side of her head.

Peggy, grimacing, unstrapped her helmet and pulled it off. A snarl of dark hair slipped free, most of it pulled out of its ponytail. The side of her face was a dark smear. Jack examined her temple by flashlight while she held her hair back.

It didn't seem to be too bad. The bleeding had already eased to a dark mass of clotting under her hair. There was bruising starting to show along the side of her face and her hairline, where the edge of the helmet had smacked into her head. Her face was going to be a mess come morning. Luckily, nothing about their mission required interacting with people.

"You hurt anywhere else?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't even remember what happened, not really. I think it was the wind -- I hit the side of the plane ..." She took a breath and touched the swollen side of her head with gingerly fingers, and then looked at him with eyes that were almost black in the moonlight. "Jack ..." she began, and fell silent, then held out the radio. "Yours," she said with a smile.

"Thanks." He took it, his bare fingers -- he'd taken off his leather flight gloves to look at her head -- brushing across her gloved ones. 

She caught his hand, clasped it briefly, and then let it go. Her smile was warm, if still slightly pained. 

"Need a few minutes, or are you ready to get going?" he asked, glancing away to cover the emotion he felt. That had been much too close.

"We'd best move. The moon will be setting soon, and we'd better cover as much ground as possible before dawn."

"Right, then." He took a breath, looked up at the moon, then over at Peggy. She had her compass out, bruised brow knit in a frown of concentration as she tilted it to the moonlight.

When they started walking, she kept up with him effortlessly.

 

***

 

Two days later, the pickup plane was right where it should be at the agreed-upon landing strip, Daniel sitting on a stack of crates and waiting for them. When they came out of the edge of the woods -- dirty, tired, and having picked up a few more bruises, but otherwise undamaged -- he jumped down from the crates. Jack was pretty sure Daniel would have run over if he could. As it was, he managed a swift walk and met them halfway.

"Got the papers," Jack said without preamble, patting the satchel of Leviathan research files swinging at his side.

"Right, because that is absolutely what I care about." Daniel didn't even glance at it; he gripped Peggy's arm instead. One look at her face garnered a sympathetic wince. 

"I know," Peggy said. With a dark glance at Jack, she said, "Someone has been telling me for days that I look as if I went seven rounds with Sugar Ray, as if I'm supposed to know who that is."

"Well, I'm not wrong," Jack said. "Am I wrong? Sousa?"

"You look great," Daniel told her, and kissed her quickly on the lips. "As for you, Jack ..."

"So I insulted your fiancée's face. There isn't much else to talk about while hiking through twenty miles of woods in a forest we're not even supposed to be in."

"I watched everything, you know," Daniel said. "From the plane."

Jack could just picture that, Daniel hanging out the door, one misstep or random surge of turbulence from falling after them. "Good job not falling out. I couldn't catch two of you."

Daniel started to say something, then shook his head with a half-grin and snugged his arm a little tighter around Peggy. "Good job not caring. We can all see how much you don't care."

Trust Daniel to remember _that_ , of all things, for two days. Having not just one of them but _both_ of them looking at him in that warm, too-knowing way was really too much. "Is that airplane over there just for looks, or are we leaving sometime soon? Because I could use a warm bed and a shower."

" _Yes_ , you could," was Peggy's unsympathetic response.

"See if I ever jump out of a plane for _you_ again. _Either_ of you," he added to Daniel's smirk.

"Since I think this mission cost me a good three years of my life, I declare a veto on any and all missions involving jumping out of planes in the near future," Daniel declared, and pointed to their waiting ride, its propellers spun up and side door open. "Can we get out of here?"

"The sooner the better," Jack said, and brushed past the two of them to lead the march.

Daniel snagged him as he went by. He'd _thought_ Daniel's hands were safely occupied, one hand on the crutch and the other arm wrapped around Peggy, but somehow the sneaky bastard was able to catch his arm and drag him in for a quick half-hug, letting go before Jack really managed to process what was happening to him.

" _Now_ we can go," Daniel said, looking completely unrepentant. Peggy was grinning shamelessly.

"I don't know why I put up with either one of you."

But of course he did know, and glancing back -- they were keeping step with each other, arms twined about each other's waists, neither of them looking at Jack for a change -- he knew he'd jump out of that damn plane again in a heartbeat.

Just.

Hopefully not anytime soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Turns out the hardest thing about this fic was coming up with a plausible method for a midair parachute rescue. After some research (which basically convinced me that every movie I've ever seen involving one character rescuing another with a malfunctioning parachute was a TOTAL LIE) I found a news story about a scenario similar to this one: one skydiver maneuvers close to an unconscious one to pull their ripcord. So I decided to go with that.
> 
> The thing about not being able to skydive with artificial legs is a detail snagged from [the biography of WWII flying ace Douglas Bader](https://www.amazon.com/Reach-Sky-Douglas-Legless-Bluejacket/dp/1557502226/). It's probably not true of modern prosthetics, but apparently was a potential hazard with prosthetics of the period. At least the book treats it as a fact, so that was the assumption of the day.


End file.
